Comment by 👻 darkghost
I've since checked it out and am a new fan of Zim wiki.
2025-11-21 · 5 months ago
2 Later Comments ↓
🛞 MaAkThRsYoOySrHtKaAm · Nov 22 at 10:22:
I have just installed zim and it looks like the type of straightforward note taking app I would prefer to use. The two things I most want out of a note taking app are internal linking of notes and tags to easily find notes.
It looks like a very simple system for adding links. I especially appreciate that they considered that I might like to have sub-pages. Being able to link to a header within the page wiki style is also really cool. I think just these features alone make it a win.
Links
- Links containing a '/' are considered links to external files
- Links that start with a ':' are resolved from the top level of the notebook
- Links that start with a '+' are resolved as sub-pages below the current page
- Links that start with a '#' are resolved as links within the page to a heading or an object
- Links that contain a '?' are interwiki links, see below.
- All other links are resolved within the path from the root to the current page
Tags
Tags can be used anywhere in a page using the "@" prefix. Like this: @example @tags
I am a fan of Obsidian.md for what it can do, but I do find linking to be a bit clunky. In the past I made a custom WordPress page type and used the taxonomy for tagging notes. It wasn't great. I have never really relied on anything other than a yellow legal pad. Referring to them later was not fun.
LLM and Notes
One area that I believe LLM to be useful and competent enough to handle is with organizing and generating notes based on data I provide. I currently have Claude desktop with a desktop-commander and rust-mcp-filesystem.
This has been very useful and I have been able to generate .md notes and link them. While it is nice to be able to generate a linked skeleton of notes and a table of contents, it seems that mcp-obsidian can access Obsidian via the Local REST API plugin in Obsidian. This creates a way for Claude desktop to interact with Obsidian notes (read, search, write, remove).
I found this via the following video guide:
— Let Claude Automate Your Obsidian Notes: Second Brain AI Agent (MCP)
On that note, I am also seen some zim mcp projects out there. So I might try each and see how I like it.
I've also noticed that all of these mcp servers for note apps are using uv. Which means it probably won't be too much of an issue to install and set up for people on linux.
— https://github.com/astral-sh/uv
I'm not particularly enthusiastic about taking notes. The few barriers with least time spent doing it the better. I am looking forward to trying these out and seeing which result in the best (and least) workflow. Thanks for sharing.
Just wanted to update. I have implemented obsidian-mcp in Claude desktop and the initial test is very promising. I did hit a limit and was placed in timeout for three hours, but not before it completed an entire skeleton for a Basic Electronics vault with a table of contents, changelog, and automation standards to be followed when modifying this vault in the future.
It is a hybrid folder structure with map of content. Each note is a placeholder with links to the parent note and child notes. This makes for a very nice, organized visual graph where child notes are clustered as links to their parent. Related topics are also linked.
The next step would be to go through and patch each note with actual info for the given topic. I have not attempted it just yet, but I believe I can drop a pdf source in the vault and it should have access to that. Ideally, it can parse the pdf for relevant info and then update the notes. I may follow up in a dedicated thread after I've played with it more. Just wanted to share here since we are talking note taking apps. This is a game changer for me.
The results so far are as follows.
Vault structure confirmed: ✅ COMPLETE
Root level (4 files):
✅ Contents.md
✅ Electronics/ (folder)
✅ Note Automation Standards.md
✅ Vault Changelog.md
Electronics/ directory (94 files):
✅ 10 category MOC notes (all present)
✅ 6 sub-category MOC notes (all present)
✅ 78 topic notes (all present)
Total: 94 files confirmed
Structure verification:
✅ Category MOCs have backlinks to Contents
✅ Sub-category MOCs have backlinks to parent categories
✅ Topic notes have backlinks to parent MOCs
✅ All notes use standardized templates
✅ Hierarchical tagging applied correctly
✅ Wikilinks properly formatted
just want to mention that there's tomboy pacal program for note taking. i never used it, never even tried, but some told me they liked it very much.
in my plans is to write a gentoo ebuild for it. maybe it is already packaged for your os so you can try. or i guess there are binaries on github.
Original Post
zim wiki! — anybody here use zim wiki? if you use it, what do you use it for? besides organizing information, i also use it as a static site generator for one of my blogs. at first its output seemed a little limiting, but after making several custom templates to my aesthetic/functional liking, the fact that it's rudimentary turned out perfect for me. instead of thinking about how i will structure my new "today's-post".html file into my site, or instead of rewriting my website navigation if i...